A moan about modern day

[Lewy-]

Righty...

First of all, it was my dream to be a pilot, and it still is, but a while ago i accepted it for just that, a dream. This is due to my maths grade not being the minimum required.

So i studied engineering for a while, and am about to do an apprenticeship in Heavy goods vehicle engineering (As my maths grade wont even allow me to do an apprenticeship with aircraft engineering :()

So the big question is- What do you all think the likelihood of being accepted into some form of training such as an apprenticeship for aircaft engineering is, even with my poor maths grade, if i complete this HGV course which would give me the equivelant of 3 A levels?

Its just incredibly annoying that no one is willing to give you a chance, just because of my grade, despite the fact i have proven i can do maths at a much higher level than whats written on that piece of paper.
So im hoping this cours eequivilent to 3 A levels may help employers overlook it.


Sorry for the long and moany post guys!

thanks once again,

Lewis

[MikeAlphaBravo]

I think you have been given duff info. I know pilots who left school with nothing and that made no difference to them. Since times are not good in the industry at present, it would be wise for you to complete your apprenticeship. At least then you have a fall back career when you do start flying. The most important thing when applying for jobs is that you have a ATPL(f). You dont need HNC maths, as long as you can do your 3 times table :O

[getoffmycloud]

Lewy why no have another crack at the maths?
What was the problem crap teacher? Or are you really just hopeless with numbers?
Are you practical e.g. do you spend you weekends tinkering with car engines etc? You said you studied engineering for a while... where and what for?
Bit hard to say if you will cut it as an aircraft engineer based on what you have posted so far.
However if you just have no clue with numbers etc the engineering may not be the way forward.

[Halfbaked_Boy]

I suspect Lewy may have suffered a meeting with a school career advisor. They know diddly squat about the majority of sectors let alone 'out there' careers such as airline flying.

My careers advisor said - in more words than these - that I was too fat to become an airline pilot! No disrespect, but I've seen Captains with bigger bellies than Rik Waller. Not that I have to worry, I hold a class 1 and have a six pack these days, that's what six months in the sun and lots of exercise does to you!

Regards, Jack.

[daria-ox]

Oh boy!
Honestly, you don't need any qualifications to become a pilot, it will be easier to study for your ATPL's if you do. But that's your choice. In the end, when looking for a job what matters is your hours and who you know rather than what you know.

I 'suffered' a meeting with a career advisor who said that before I can even thinking about training, I need to go to uni, because unless I do, I'll have no job in the end. Loads of crap. Second thing was, I suffered a personal injury when I was a little girl and he said that would disqualify me in 100% :sad:

When I went for my Class 2 medical, AME said that this doesn't even matter. It's nothing, and I'll have no problems with passing Class 1 which I've got coming up soon!

If you want to become a pilot, go for it. It's a tough road.. especially in the current climate, but I personally think it's good time to train, but before you spend a penny, get a class 1 medical.


Good luck!
:ok:

[preduk]

I told my career advisor in school that I wanted to become a pilot but first go to University, she decided the best course for me would be to get a job with the local council as a maintenance guy!?

[Lewy-]

Haha, most of you are nailing it!

I know it sounds like such a typical excuse, but i really did have a crap maths teacher, my school failed its ofsted report just to give you some idea.

I can do maths practically, and yes i am also practical with the whole tinkering with cars, but i also have a good professional background of knowledge.

And yes, i also had a bad meeting with a careers advisor. Two meetings i had one in school and one outside of school...both were useless wastes of space.

Am surprised you dont need all these qualifications though! :o I thought you'd promptly be shown the door if you didnt have all the maths grades etc...

Perhaps i'll take your advice...get some money behind me, and eventually do my ATPL :D

P.S preduk (http://www.pprune.org/members/169312-preduk) - As they work for the council, i think these careers advisors are paid to recruit people into what the local economy needs at the time. Useless people. Done me and many other no favours.

[preduk]

My career advisor was my guidance teacher, so she had followed my progress throughout school and thought thats what I was bet for.

My parents weren't happy about it either at the time, was ages ago though hopefully teachers have changed now.

[LessThanSte]

Incidently, for anyone thats been through the course, what kind of maths do they go into? The standard v=u+at and all those equations i would assume are sensible, as would be a bit of f=ma, drag (which is only a load of factors all stuck together and nothing complicated) and possibly some trig here and there.

Do they go as far as fluid flow theorys, boundary layers in flows and all that jazz? Its not terribly difficult for someone who spent 4 or 5 years doing it but might be a bit hectic for someone who struggled through maths at A-level if its part of the course. Or would they leave that side of things to the aerodynamisists?

Lewy, my GUESS would be that given the climate currently they would only want to take people on if they were 100% sure they were going to pass and a dodgy grade might indicate a problem. Having said that, with the amount of assessments they go through with aptitude, id assume that if you got through the selection phase they wouldnt be worried about whether you can do differential equations and advanced calculus. Id therefore say that instead of necessarily spending a load of money on doing your a level or something again, just practice standard things, addition/subtraction/multiplication/division of big numbers quickly and accurately.

But then i guess maths is only half of it (are pilots allowed calculators on the flight deck?) and the hand eye coordination tests are just as, if not more important as is, indeed, your ability to learn and your flying standard. If you happened to be the best pilot thats ever flown an aircraft, technically perfect etc, im sure they wouldnt be too miffed if you could add 5276 and 46589 together in less than 15 seconds

[flying macaco]

The standard v=u+at and all those equations i would assume are sensible, as would be a bit of f=ma, drag (which is only a load of factors all stuck together and nothing complicated) and possibly some trig here and there.


As far as I remember the maths isn't really anyway near A-Level standard, let alone Uni level. v=u+at and Newton's other 4 beauties aren't in there either as far as I remember. f=ma is and equations for lift used quite a bit. Navigation involves some trig. If you got a basic level of maths and have a decent ground school you will be fine. Lad in my class was straight from GCSE's and now flying for BA.

Good luck :O

[corsair]

Am surprised you dont need all these qualifications though! :o I thought you'd promptly be shown the door if you didnt have all the maths grades etc...

Who would be showing you the door? It certainly wouldn't be the flying school unless it's one of those fussy integrated 'We only take those with right stuff, the best of the best' flying schools. The only qualification you need to learn to fly is money. Once qualified the airlines mostly care less what you did in school or if you were even in school. They are only interested in you having a licence and fitting in with their culture. The maths thing is a complete red herring. You certainly have been woefully misinformed.

There is a maths element to exams and flying but it's mostly practical. You say you've done Engineering. I presume there's a bit of maths in that? Even the HGV apprenticeship.

Lessthanste
Lewy, my GUESS would be that given the climate currently they would only want to take people on if they were 100% sure they were going to pass and a dodgy grade might indicate a problem. Which they would this be? As I said flight schools mostly want your money. Possibly mentored schemes might have some kind of requirement.

For modular training all you need to sit the ATPL exams all you actually have to do is get a PPL and then do the exams. You can do them through distance learning. There is no they in the equation.

I was never the world's leading expert at maths. But I passed my exams and found them to be not that difficult really.

[LessThanSte]

By they i was referring to the integrated courses from people like OAA/CTC, though your probably right that if, for example, you were the first person to express any interest in a couple of months you may well get through despite not being 'the best'.

It does intrigue me about PPL, that you could do it quite easily without leaving your own home, other than for flying lessons. And i suppose if your a natural and do a lot of training on the sims (MS Flight Sim, XPlane etc) then your only going to help yourself.

Out of interest, how much does '1 hour' of flying generally cost, on average. £200-300 i would guess? Given that youve got to do a certain amount of get the license (you have, havnt you), does it work out cheaper to do it privately or through a school that costs £30000 but does everything up to PPL.

Having thought about this more and more i can see why modular, for those not in sponsored schemes, is popular!

[daria-ox]

PPL to fATPL would cost something like 45k, inc. FI rating. without TR of course.. not 30000 just for the PPL. I'm refering to ' through a school that costs £30000 but does everything up to PPL'

[JohnRayner]

I've yet to see any FTO website stipulate basic school qualifications. They all quote aviation minima required to proceed to the next level.

Those FTO's that do have aptitude testing I think include their own maths assessment, and therefore would probably not pay too much attention to your GCSE if you could pass that.

If the grade you got really niggles, why not do it again?

And I agree, school careers advice is the pits!

JR

[G SXTY]

I've said it before and I'll say it again, failing A level maths didn't stop me becoming a pilot. What little maths there is in the ATPLs is GCSE standard, and for airline pilots a working knowledge of the three times table is quite sufficient.

The only caveat is that younger candidates with little or no work / life experience would be well advised to get the best exam grades they can, as they won't have much else on their CV.

Oh, and by the way, my school careers adviser reckoned I was too short to be an airline pilot - suggested a career as a quantity surveyor instead. :p

[Lewy-]

I just had a look at oxford aviation academy. And they say you need so many GCSE's at certain grades, including maths, and also 2 A levels...

So its not looking good for this 'Become a pilot without qualifications' thing that someone mentioned :(

EDIT: Thanks for the tips about only needing money! I wish! Then i could take out a loan or something, but as i said, so far im still only seeing that they want certain entry requirements! Grr

So far i seem to be screwed!

[corsair]

You are not really getting the message are you, lewy? Sure OAA have entry requirements for their integrated courses. What has that to do with anything? You probably can't afford them anyway.

G SXTY is a working airline pilot who failed maths. What more evidence do you need?

You're talking yourself out of it.

lessthanste
It does intrigue me about PPL, that you could do it quite easily without leaving your own home, other than for flying lessons. And i suppose if your a natural and do a lot of training on the sims (MS Flight Sim, XPlane etc) then your only going to help yourself

Not quite, you do have to attend some classroom work. Also, doing a lot of training on those 'sims' won't help much. They are games. You'll also need to be building up to the 200 hours you need before you can get your CPL. So staying at home isn't much of an option.


Again, I seem to detect a tendency among wannabees that the only route to being a pilot is through expensive integrated courses at 'flying colleges' with entrance tests.

Lewy seems to think that he can't become a pilot because OAA want maths GCSEs. :hmm:

[daria-ox]

LEWY, you're talking yourself out of it as others said.

You don't really want to go integrated, first things first.. the time isn't the best, there's no jobs out there right now, other thing is.. do you really have 100k to spend?

You need A levels, GCSE's and all this kinda thing when you go integrated. You can gain the same licenses without these qualifications if you'll go modular. It will save you a lot of money which then you could fairly spend on building up your hours, another thing is.. you will be able to take your time with it and won't finish everything in a year and a half, you'll be able to do it at your own pace.

[flying macaco]

I did an integrated course at Oxford. Know people who went through without any A-Levels at all. They have their own maths tests as part of the selection, pass those and they'll bite your arm of for your money. ;)

[Lewy-]

Sorry chaps, im not trying to put obstacles in the way, and trying not to talk myself out of it. Just trying to cover all angle's thats all.

But i have heard the saying you need to be a bit pessemistic to be a pilot :cool:

No i havent got £100k to spend, like most people.

My plan was to work as an engineer (For HGV's) for a while and accumulate some money that i can use to go towards flight training.

I shall have to look into this 'modular' training. Although i dont know the difference between modular and integrated training, and how to go about it either.

As you all can tell im in the dark a lot about training and careers in this industry.

And i have to say, thank you all for your help so far, you really have been a good helping hand!! :ok:

[EGCC4284]

My story

First of all, apologies for my spelling mistakes, I am not the brightest guy in the world.

I left school at 16 with poor CSE results. Got a CSE grade 3 in math's

My dream at that time was to be a long distance lorry driver.

At 17, I got a job driving a van. At 19 I got a job at a haulage company driving 7 and a half tonne trucks which you can do on a car driving licence.

At 21, I got my HGV licence and that was the beginning of 10 years as a truck driver. I drove tankers for 6 years carrying chemical waste and also drove for 3 years for Eddie Stobart Ltd.

When I was 18, I use to go to Manchester Airport looking at the planes and never in a million years did I think I would one day be a pilot.

When I was 30, I began to get fed up with being a truck driver and I thought that my next career would be as an aircraft refueller. I applied to Esso, Shell and BP at Manchester Airport and was lucky enough to get a job with Shell starting on May 13th 1998.

6 months after starting this job and getting to know a few pilots, I realised that to be a pilot, you did not have to be anything special with regards intelligence. It was then that the dream to be a pilot was born.

I did my PPL at Welshpool in Aug-Sept 1999. I did a 4 week intense course which was not enough time. I ended up being 3 hours short and had to go back to Welshpool for 2 days to finish it off in Oct 1999. I did my PPL in 45 hours.

In Jan 2000, I bought a share of a Cessna 150 G-BBKY for £1300 which was based at Barton and my idea was to tell as many people as poss that I was looking for anyone interested in flying to come with me and share the cost. I use to get billed £35 a month even if I did not fly it and then get charged £35 an hour to fly it. I use to take people up for an hour, show them how to fly it and let them have a go at the controls. I would ask them for half the cost. I was happy as I was getting hours in my log book and they were having an hour’s flying cheap.

I sold my share of this plane in August 2008 for £1600 and had logged 400 hours in it in 6 years

Welcome to the G-BBKY web site (http://www.kiloyankee.co.uk/)

Gallery (http://www.kiloyankee.co.uk/gallery.htm)

I did this for the next 5 years helping me build the hours I needed for starting my CPL course. Your need 150 hours total before you can start a CPL course.

Also before you start a CPL course, you need to have passed 14 ATPL exams. To do this I started a correspondence course with Bristol Ground School. This correspondence course took me 3 years to complete as I was still working full time at Shell whilst I was doing it. It was very hard for me.

Welcome to Bristol.gs (http://www.bristol.gs/)

Bristol.gs (http://www.bristol.gs/groundschool/main.aspx)

Bristol.gs (http://www.bristol.gs/training/main.aspx)

Bristol.gs (http://www.bristol.gs/groundschool/support_main.aspx)

ATP Forum - Powered by vBulletin (http://www.atpforum.co.uk/)

When I had passed all those exams, it was then Sept 2005.

I then did my 5 hour night rating course at Ravenair at Liverpool.

I then did my 28 hour CPL and 55 IR courses at Ravenair, Liverpool.
Ravenair Air Charter and Flying Training (http://www.ravenair.co.uk/)

Ravenair Flying Training (http://www.ravenair.co.uk/C1.html)

I then did an MCC course at The flight Centre at Wolverhampton.
The Flight Centre at Halfpenny Green : Private Pilot Training PPL : Commercial Pilot (http://www.hgfc.co.uk/)

That was it, all completed after 6 years of hard part time work, I had a Commercial Pilots Licence.

I then carried on as a refueller for Shell whilst I looked for a job.

It took 18 months to get a job and was in fact offered 2 at once. One with BMI Regional on their Embrear 145's and also one with Thomsonfly on their Boeing 737's. It was a no brainer.

I joined Thomsonfly as my first job aged 39, moduler and with only 440 hours.

You don’t need math’s to be a pilot, you just need determination and a will to make your own luck in this world.

http://www.pprune.org/3821823-post640.html
PM me if you like and you can give me a call
Rob

[corsair]

There ya go, egcc4284 did it so can you. Go to the other forum and read the sticky.

[INNflight]

I've had Ds in Maths for the last three years in school and still fly, don't worry.


:ok:

edit: It's not true that you have to be an ace in maths to be a good pilot. There is certain types of maths you need for flying, and I am sure you'll easily get into that, because it connects you to what you like to do. Most of the stuff in school isn't all that important.

[JohnRayner]

i dont know the difference between modular and integrated training

Get yourself a nice comfy chair. Find yourself a large drink of whatever you like. Make sure you've gone to the toilet. Then start searching this site for info on the above.

On the subject of OAA and their entry requirement: Well, good for them. Have you found anyone else that has the same requirement?

The journey stories on this site make for excellent reading. Some will say they represent the exception rather than the rule. Fair enough. But they do demonstrate what is possible if you put your mind to it.

Regards, and good luck.

p.s. as mentioned here already, if you convince yourself you can't do something, then that conviction will almost certainly bear fruit. Balance your desire with a bit of realism, but don't write things off before they're begun.

JR

[White Otter]

Levy - I think that this link (http://www.profpilot.co.uk/startout.html) could help you out. It has a guide to what you would do via the modular and integrated routes layed out and also has info on the different steps at the side.

[Lewy-]

EGCC4284 (http://www.pprune.org/members/24628-egcc4284) Thats a great story!!

Exactly the kind i needed to give me hope!
I have the detirmination, and now i know its achievable im pretty confident!

So thaks for sharing! :ok:

[LessThanSte]

Well im sorted then, driving vans for Sainsbury's Online :ok:

Good story that, shows exactly what can be done. Then again, does help when you have a job to fall back on i suppose!

[chongololo]

Well said Rob. People need to see that it is possible to get there by hard work, taking the slow road without incurring large amounts of debt and buying type ratings etc.
Well done.